Boarding School for Troubled Teens

(White River Academy is Accredited and State Licensed)

Searching for answers to problems with your struggling teen?

Let us Help!!! We are available 24 hours a day!!! We have an excellent track record of helping both teens and parents reunite in love.

How many of these are a "Yes" for your teen?

Does your teen struggle with basic family rules and expectations?
Has your teen been suspended, expelled, truant or had a drop in school grades?
Does your teen associate with a negative peer group?
Is your teens appearance or personal hygiene out side your family standards?
Does your teen have problems with authority?

If you answered yes to several of the above mentioned questions you are not alone
and do have options available to you for HELP.

Please take our full 20 question survey FREE to see what resources would be best for your struggling teen.

Learn More about our Programs Below

If you would like to learn about some of the options we offer for helping your teen, please visit long term teen program, or if you are unsure please choose unsure for a tool which will help you understand the type of help your teen needs.

Parenting Book

How long will you needlessly endure disrespect and defiance from your teen? This book provides solutions that will bring peace and happiness to your family once more
Learn more about the book...

Unsure?

Please evaluate the severity of your teen's problems with our problem teen quiz. Depending on the score, your teen may simply need better parenting. Or if the score is higher, a behavior program may be necessary.
Take the test now!

Long Term Program

This program is for teens who score 10 or higher on our teen needs quiz. This is a results based program which gives teens professional help in a controlled environment.
Learn more about this program...

White River Academy Boarding School

WRA is a special school for troubled teens because we use the powerful and proven Postive Peer Culture System to teach teens accountability, responsibility, teamwork, self-reliance, and self-awareness. Once a teen realizes how his or her actions affects others, change can begin. Change is accelerated when teens help each other to realize that it is better to be good for the right reasons than to be bad for the wrong reasons. Our school incorporates a modern emotional growth design to effectively work with troubled teens. WRA is an alternative school for troubled teens which focuses on permanent lifestyle changes in the physical, mental, social, and emotional aspects of a struggling teen's life. Our teen parent counseling also helps troubled teen students appreciate the validity of being responsible for their actions and accepting accountability for the consequences of those actions. WRA Troubled Teen Boarding School utilizes an independent teen study curriculum that covers courses six thru twelve as well as college and GED preparation.

Parents and siblings of troubled teens are provided with the necessary skills to provide constant support for their problem teen students after graduation from the residential program. Troubled teen students participate in emotional growth Positive Peer Culture group sessions, self-esteem building, goal setting and goal review sessions. Troubled youth may also participate in individual teen therapy as often as it is determined necessary. Click troubled teen enrollment to learn more about our teen boarding school programs. We have a full time therapist who gives individual teen counseling and who is very dedicated to helping each at risk teen have a clear and positive outlook on life. We have Parent-Teen Weekends regularly to meet with the parents and evaluate the progress of their teen and readjust their individual searvice plan if necessary. Parent Weekend also allows the teens and their parents to do some very fun activities together which is encouraging for the teen and educational for the parent. Parenting teens demands self-control, discipline, wisdom, and a sensitivity to your teen's problems. We help you develop those skills.

White River Academy Troubled Teen Boarding School is located in the beautiful desert of Delta, Utah. This setting has been chosen for its safety, peacefulness, and distance from urban temptations which frequently beset problem teens. By locating our teen boot camp in Delta, Utah, we are giving your troubled teen the opportunity to have a break from negative teen peer pressure, habits, and perhaps bad environments. Delta, is a small town it is located 78 miles SW of Provo, Utah and 260 miles NE of Las Vegas, Nevada. It is in Millard county. The population of the city in 2000 was 3,209. The desert location of our teen boot camp makes it very unlikely for us to have runaway teens.

Delta has some fun activities for troubled teens. Delta's West Desert is a rock collector's paradise. There is a plethora of different rocks, minerals, and fossils in the area. Troubled teens can enjoy discovering and learning about fossils, minerals & rocks; visiting the Great Basin Museum, the train station, and the Topaz War Relocation Camp. Trilobite fossils are relatively common in the region west of Delta (part of the Wheeler Shale) and at least one company (located near Antelope Springs) allows visitors (even troubled teens) to dig their own fossils for a fee. For more information on Delta, Utah and the location of White River Academy Boot Camp visit our teen boarding school location page.

Troubled teens in our, at risk youth program, participate in learning the importance of morals and doing the right thing for the right reason. Lawrence Kohlberg a moral philosopher and student of child development observed that growing children advance through definite stages of moral development in a manner similar to their progression through Piaget's well-known stages of cognitive development. His observations and testing of children and adults, led him to theorize that human beings progress consecutively from one stage to the next in an invariant sequence, not skipping any stage or going back to any previous stage. These are stages of thought processing, implying qualitatively different modes of thinking and of problem solving at each stage. Through these stages of moral development it is essential that youth learn what it is like to do something for someone else without expecting anything in return, the old fashion method of service. Many teens in this day and age have become accustomed to receiving without giving often times because we as parents wish to give them everything their hearts desire. In doing this the youth is deprived of the experience of working for what he gets. At White River Academy we go back to the basics. Troubled Teens work for what they receive and gain a desire to assist and care for those around them. They learn that they have intrinsic value because they can help others and they are needed by their friends to be a good example.

When a student in our boarding school for troubled teens refuses to comply with the above mentioned requirements, they lose trust, drop stages, eliminate opportunities to gain privileges, and delay graduation from our troubled teen program.

A fitness and Wellness Coordinator at our school for troubled teens oversees a daily calendar of sports and physical fitness activities for teens as well as daily calisthenics, inspections and uniforms. All troubled teen students are required to participate in fitness activities to assist in improving balance, coordination, endurance, strength, and general health. On campus teen activities include basketball, football, volleyball, baseball capture the flag, as well as many other onsite activities. Off campus activities include Spelunking, site seeing, repelling, hiking, camping, Intramural Sports, swimming, working out at a local gym, bowling, movies, dances, horse back riding, and many other fun filled activities. Troubled teens in our at risk youth program are only allowed to participate in these activities when they have reached an appropriate level of trust. To see a sample troubled teen activity schedule and explanation of each item please click teen boarding school schedule.

Today's Teen Parenting Tip:

Loving a child doesn’t mean giving in to all his whims; to love him is to bring out the best in him, to teach him to love what is difficult.
Nadia Boulanger

View WRA Boarding School's Troubled Teen Newsletter!

^New! Useful Articles for Parents of Troubled Teens:

Boarding School Peers
Helping Teens Help Teens
Troubled Teens & Obedience

Reformed Troubled Teens
Teen Trust vs. Invasion
Opportunity in Teen Problems

Focus on Current Teen Problems
Teen Depression, ADD & ADHD
Teen Values vs Rules

Choose Private Boarding School that is Not in Your State or Your City

Many troubled teen parents search for a private boarding school that is located close to their house. Sometimes they search for a military high school for troubled teens in their own city. This is not recommended as it makes it too easy for the troubled teen to communicate with peers who have a negative influence. Choosing a military school which is far away and in a rural setting will help your teen forget his old ways and start a new life. We have had great success with teens from large cities such as:

Tucson, Mesa,and Phoenix from Arizona the Grand Canyon State
San Jose, Long Beach, Fresno, Sacramento, Oakland, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego from the California the Golden State
Denver, and Colorado Springs from Colorado the Centennial State
Washington from District of Columbia the Federal City
Miami
Jacksonville from Florida the Sunshine State
Atlanta from Georgia the Peach State
Honolulu from Hawaii the Aloha State
Chicago from Illinois the Land of Lincoln
Indianapolis from Indiana the Hoosler State
Louisville from Kentucky the Bluegrass State
Baltimore from Maryland the Old Line State
Boston from Massachusetts the Bay State
Detroit from Michigan the Great Lakes State
Minneapolis from Minnesota the North Star State
Kansas City from Missouri the Show Me State
Omaha from Nebraska the Cornhusker State
Las Vegas from Nevada the Silver State
Albuquerque from New Mexico the Land of Enchantment
New York from New York the Empire State
Charlotte from North Carolina the Old North State Cleveland, Columbus from Ohio the Buckeye State
Oklahoma City, the Sooner State
Tulsa from Oklahoma the Sooner State
Portland from Oregon the Beaver State
Philadelphia from Pennsylvania the Keystone State
Nashville,and Memphis from Tennessee the Volunteer State
Houston, Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth, El Paso, and San Antonio from Texas the Lone Star State
Virginia Beach from Virginia the Old Dominion State
Seattle from Washington the Evergreen State, and Milwaukee from Wisconsin the Badger State.

Boarding School Definitions:

Boot Camp: a disciplinary facility or program in which young offenders are forced to participate in a rigidly structured routine.

White River Academy Boys Boarding School - a positive peer pressure boys home and school for troubled teens.